Sleep Paralysis Breakthroughs

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"To get a better understanding of what causes sleep paralysis in REM, Patricia Brooks and John Peever at the University of Toronto monitored the electrical activity in rats’ facial muscles, triggered by trigeminal motor neurons sending messages to the brain (basically, they looked at what causes sleeping rats to chew while asleep).In an effort to stop sleep paralysis, they blocked the neurotransmitters they thought were responsible for the phenomenon—ionotropic GABAA/glycine receptors—but sleep paralysis still occurred. Next, Peever and Brooks tried blocking the GABAA/glycine ionotropic receptors and the metabotropic GABAB—which did, in fact, stop sleep paralysis, meaning that both gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glycine must be present and working together to cause sleep paralysis."